In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

49 From the fall of the toltec empire in the 1170s to the establishment of the Aztec empire in the 1430s, central Mexico became an arena of struggle in which multiple immigrant groups, such as the chichimecs, and the native residents, such as the toltecs, competed for land and political power. They frequently conducted wars against each other and sometimes peacefully assimilated with each other through intermarriage. The toltecs, who migrated from tula, the capital of the toltec empire, and established themselves in central Mexico earlier than the chichimecs, maintained a politically and culturally advanced lifestyle. numerous pictorial codices depict the use of cotton cloth and the cultivation of corn as identifying symbols of toltec culture. The chichimecs, who migrated from the north later than the toltecs, were huntergatherers rather than cultivators. Their identifying features in the pictographic medium were arrows, bows, and animal skin clothing. in most cases, the chichimecs abandoned their original lifestyle and adopted the advanced toltec political, religious, and cultural systems (Kirchhoff 1948; león-Portilla 1967a). The chichimecs even gave up their mother tongue for nahuatl, the language of the toltecs. Due to this toltecization, colhuacan, the capital city of the toltecs in the basin, was venerated as the place of ancestors. when the Mexica founded tenochtitlan in 1325, most chichimec groups in central Mexico had already settled down, assimilated to toltec culture, and in many cases established ethnically diverse city-states. Despite their political independence, these city-states claimed both the toltecs and the chichimecs as their foundational ancestors. some of them, such as texcoco and tenayuca (Códice Xolotl 1996), tepetlaoztoc (Códice de Tepetlaoztoc 1992), and chalco (chimalpahin 1998), begin their foundational history with the immigration of their chichimec ancestors. on the other hand, other city-states, such as cuauhtitlan (Annals c h a p t e r t w o Founding the Texcoca Dynasty Chichimec Xolotl and Toltec Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl chapter two 50 of Cuauhtitlan 1992), cholula (Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca 1989), and tlaxcala (Muñoz camargo 1986), begin their regional histories with the toltecs. both versions, however, demonstrate that sooner or later the chichimecs adopted the toltec lifestyle, and the toltecs accepted the chichimecs as immigrants or were forced to accept them as neighbors in their territory. in some cases, these sources call their ancestors the toltec-chichimecs. in their pictorial and alphabetic texts, the texcoca demonstrate their chichimec andtoltec origin more than any other regional group in the basin of Mexico.They present one of the most powerful chichimec rulers,xolotl,as the founder of the texcoca dynasty. Along with xolotl, they also present topiltzin quetzalcoatl, the symbolic figure of the toltec civilization, as another founder of their dynasty.in this way,thetexcoca argue that their city,texcoco,inherited not only the vast chichimec land, chichimecatlalli, from the great chichimec emperor xolotl, but also the advanced political and religious systems from the last toltec ruler,topiltzin quetzalcoatl. Don fernando de Alva ixtlilxochitl, in particular, repeatedly attests that the texcoca dynasty is the legitimate heir of both chichimec and toltec traditions. This claim, however, was motivated by the desire to embellish texcoco’s regional history by exaggerating and in many cases even inventing the political and cultural achievements of texcoca rulers. in addition, Alva ixtlilxochitl’s making topiltzin quetzalcoatl a founder of the texcoca dynasty was a postconquest invention motivated by a christian perception of history: this texcoca topiltzin quetzalcoatl was not a pre-Hispanic toltec ruler but rather the postconquest figure quetzalcoatl–saint Thomas, whom spanish friars introduced in their evangelization efforts. Making Xolotl the Founder of the Texcoca Dynasty Most nahua scholars from the colonial period to the present have accepted xolotl as the founder of the texcoca dynasty,but this acceptance is based solely on the colonial texcoca sources that overlook the continuous revision of the foundational history of the texcoca dynasty. The texcoca pictorial texts, Mapa Quinatzin(Aubin1886a),MapaTlotzin(Aubin1886b),andCódiceXolotl(1996), present quinatzin as the founder of texcoco, but they differ in regard to the founder of the ruling texcoca dynasty. The Mapa Quinatzin depicts quinatzin as the founder of both texcoco and its dynasty: it records no previous rulers or ancestors before quinatzin, and he appears seated on the authority mat, icpalli (figure 2.1).1 The Mapa Tlotzin clearly establishes that the texcoca dynasty begins with tlotzin, who cofounds the city-state of texcoco along with his son quinatzin (figure 2.2). The Códice Xolotl also depicts quinatzin as the founder of...

Share